The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain) (32 page)

“Very well done indeed,” said Hlah. “But what about the runaways?”

“Oh, we take more booty than we can use and give the rest away,” the warrior said. “Those people aren’t doing so badly, nowadays. Some of the younger men come out to raid with us. We’re taking plenty of Wallekki scalps.”

“My people need furs and blankets, if you’ve any to spare,” Hlah said.

“I’ll tell Ootoo. He’ll have some sent over to you.”

Orth, now known as Sunfish, rejoiced to hear the news. “Those who have preyed on the people have become their protectors,” he said.

“They haven’t changed so much,” Hlah said. “Abnaks would always rather rob caravans than serve in an army with strangers telling them what to do.”

“Nevertheless, the Lord makes use of them. They’re serving Him now, whether they know it or not.”

In truth, Hlah was surprised the next day when half a dozen Abnaks and ten refugees arrived with armloads of furs and blankets tied into bales. They also brought a few skins of southern wine, cheeses, a cured ham, and two steel saws. The women in the camp wept for joy to see so much abundance. It was much more than Hlah had asked for or ever expected to receive.

Sunfish laughed merrily and blessed the Abnaks.

“What’s he doing?” one asked.

“He’s commending you to the true God, for blessings,” Hlah said. “He prays that God will keep you safe and make you prosper.”

“Can the Obann God do that?”

“He can. He created you and all the world around you—everything you see and everything you don’t see,” Hlah answered. “He is not like our Abnak gods. It’s an easy thing for Him to bless you, and He delights in doing it.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to have a god watching over us,” another warrior said. “The Thunder King took away our little gods. He told us we would win glory, conquering Obann. He tricked us into serving in his armies and turned us into slaves. I hope this Obann God is big enough to bless us.”

“He is,” said Hlah. “Someday the Thunder King will see how big God is. But I doubt he’ll profit from the lesson.”

Down below, Helki took as many prisoners as possible; and soon Santay and the Abnaks saw the wisdom of it. Most of the prisoners quickly agreed to join them and fight against the Thunder King. The little army grew by the day. Some of the Heathen sought them out and joined without a fight.

“Soon the Thunder King will have no more men to fight for him on this bank of the river,” Santay said.

Aided greatly by the Wallekki riders who had joined them, Helki’s men won a prize that Helki had been coveting: they captured a mardar.

The mardar was in command of a body of Zeph, but he was not himself a Zephite. He belonged to some exotic nation who decorated their bodies with raised scars. His face was painted half-red, half-blue. But he spoke Wallekki, so Helki was able to question him.

“You will all be destroyed by my master the Thunder King,” the mardar said, “when he comes down from the mountains in the spring.”

There’s something that I didn’t know, thought Helki—that the Thunder King was up there. To the mardar he said, “Why doesn’t he destroy us now? They say his mardars speak with his voice and carry his power in them and that he hears what his mardars hear. So he must hear me speaking to you. Ask him why you’re our prisoner. Why didn’t he give you the power to capture us?”

“All in good time!” answered the mardar.

“Things aren’t going well for your side, are they?”

The mardar showed his teeth. “Did you capture me just to taunt me?”

Santay wanted to hang him by his heels until he learned some manners. “Mardars are the creatures of the Thunder King. It’s dangerous to let one live,” he said. “They do have power, Helki. They trapped our gods in wooden images and took them away.”

“They turned our water bad, even as it flowed in the streams,” spoke up Tiliqua the Griff.

“They caused our mares to foal prematurely, and our whole wealth in horses would have perished if we hadn’t surrendered to the Thunder King,” said a Wallekki.

“We’ve all seen these things with our own eyes,” added another.

The mardar sat before them on the ground with his hands tied behind his back—and yet they feared him. Fear wouldn’t stop them from killing this mardar, now that they had the chance, Helki thought: but fear had enslaved them to the Thunder King.

“Brothers,” he said, “I don’t believe in any of that mardar magic. If it was real, this man wouldn’t be our prisoner. You should’ve seen what happened to the lovely big army they had before Obann! No one can find it anymore, and Obann still stands. There were hundreds of mardars with that army, all making magic. It didn’t do them any good.”

“But we have seen the magic!” Tiliqua said.

“Well, I haven’t,” answered Helki. “So here’s what we’ll do. We’ll keep this fellow for a while, tied up good and tight. I don’t want him killed or tortured. I just want to keep him uncomfortable until he shows me some mardar magic I can see.

“Don’t anybody talk to him, and don’t anybody listen if he talks—I don’t want him to spook some poor fool into letting him go. Santay, can you see to that?”

“Huh! We killed our mardar,” Santay said. “We’ll kill this one if he can’t hold his tongue. If he tries to put a spell on us, I’ll cut out his tongue myself.”

“If he can make some magic that I can see for myself, I’ll let him go,” Helki said. “But I don’t think he will.”

In the morning Lord Reesh missed Gallgoid. He wasn’t in their cabin, nor did he return when a slave brought their breakfast. He didn’t come back to help Reesh dress, which was a cusset inconvenience. With some difficulty the First Prester struggled into his clothes, cursing under his breath. Once dressed, he opened the door and stood in the doorway, looking for his man; but not for long. It was too cold to be standing there, and snowing rather heavily. Reesh slammed the door and sat down to his breakfast.

He sat alone all morning. His thoughts were bad company. He used to dream he heard King Ozias’ bell ringing from the top of Bell Mountain. He meditated on a verse in the Book of Prophet Ika: The least among you shall dream dreams: the boy and the maiden, the shepherd and the slave, the widow, the fatherless, and the old who are no more honored by the young. Reesh dreamed such a dream, and yet refused to believe in God. Now he wondered if perhaps he’d been wrong.

Early in the afternoon, Mardar Kyo came to him.

“Have you seen my servant?” Reesh said. “He wasn’t here when I woke up, and I haven’t seen him all day. It’s a nuisance!”

“Never mind him, First Prester. I’ll tell my servants to find him. But I came to tell you to get ready. Our master the Thunder King will speak with you again in private audience, this evening.”

Words froze in Reesh’s mouth. Kyo smiled at him.

“There’s nothing to fear,” he said. “Our master is pleased with you. I’ll have servants come and help you bathe and dress if your man doesn’t return.”

“But what can the master wish to say to me?”

“I don’t know,” Kyo said. “He hasn’t made it known to me. But you should be glad he holds you in esteem.”

Reesh sat alone all afternoon. Gallgoid didn’t come back. Outside, the snow muffled sound. It was easy to imagine there was nothing out there at all—that there were no people anywhere.

Gallgoid must have run away. But why? Reesh couldn’t think of any reason. He’d put his trust in the man: “The more fool me!” he thought. First Orth, now Gallgoid. What would the Thunder King think of such poor judgment?

But no—he corrected himself. Before Orth or Gallgoid there was Martis. The best assassin in Obann: Reesh took him off the streets and trained him, raised him as a man would raise a fine hunting dog, practically handfed him. He sent Martis out to stop those accursed children from ringing the bell, and he failed. Reesh never saw him again, or ever heard what happened to him.

“The bell! It all started with that cusset bell!” Reesh’s thoughts tormented him. He nearly fainted when Kyo knocked on the door to summon him into the presence of the Thunder King.

Once again he had to sidle past the monstrous cat as it glared at him. Once again he had to grope his way through the dark corridor, to be admitted into the Thunder King’s private chamber. Again he found the Great Man seated with his golden mask on the little table beside him. This time there was a hint of an odd smell in the air, as if there were a butcher shop next door. But Reesh was given no time to wonder about it.

“I wished to see you again, Lord Reesh, before you continued on your way to Kara Karram. It will stop snowing soon, and my people will clear the road down the mountain. You should arrive at my Temple well before midsummer.”

Reesh nodded, not knowing what to say.

“I regret to tell you that your servant is dead,” the Thunder King said. “He tried to escape, tried to return to Obann, and he was slain.”

“I didn’t know. He never said anything about …” Reesh couldn’t finish his answer. You never did know what that burn’d fool Gallgoid was thinking: well, now he wasn’t thinking anything at all. “I never should’ve trusted him!” And now there was nobody else. All alone: Lord Reesh was all alone. He felt numb inside.

“Do you know how I make a man a mardar, Lord Reesh?” The Thunder King’s question shook him back to full alertness. “He sacrifices his life to me, and I take it. And after a little while, I give it back—along with a little something of myself. They couldn’t live without it, but with it they can live a long, long time. They might still die at men’s hands or in some misadventure. True immortality belongs only to the gods. It wouldn’t do for men. But each of those men whom you see in the banquet hall each night has been dead for a short time.”

Reesh had never heard of such a thing. Was this mere madness? But how could a madman conquer all the East? What madman ever lived so long, or did so well? And yet who but a madman would say such things as this?

“You don’t believe in me.” The Thunder King’s expression was kind and calm, but Lord Reesh was afraid. “He’s too young!” the First Prester thought. “He sounds too sane!”

“Don’t be afraid, Lord Reesh! I’m not about to take your life. You think you’re going to die soon, but I tell you no—not until after you have served me in my Temple and taught the new presters, whom I shall give you, how the Temple ought to serve its god. I promise you all the time you’ll need. Death cannot come near you until you have fulfilled your time.”

Reesh bowed his head. “I am grateful, my lord,” was all he could say.

“Nevertheless,” said the Thunder King, “you are unwilling to believe in me, just as you were unwilling to believe in the God you served in Obann. But that didn’t make your service less real, did it? Because you served something greater—something that you thought was real. Do you know what this is?”

He reached into the breast of his shimmering, multicolored robe and produced a small object that he held up in his fingers. It might have been a mere chunk of dirt and rust. But it presented a more or less regular shape, oblong, with well-defined corners. Reesh took a long look at it, squinting in the lamplight.

“I would say it is an artifact, my lord,” he said, “a manmade thing from ancient times.”

“You have seen such things before.”

“I have collected them, my lord. All kinds of things.”

The Thunder King turned the object around and around, admiring it. “Ages ago,” he said, “this little thing contained power. The power has all drained out of it, of course; you can see it’s much decayed. But once there was power in it to move large objects, such as would require a team of horses today, and to give off heat and light.”

“Yes, yes—the ancients had great powers!” Reesh said. His fear fell off him instantly. “I know; I’ve made a study of it. But those powers have been lost. They are forgotten. When the Empire was destroyed, its knowledge perished.”

The Thunder King smiled. “In my country, far to the east of Kara Karram, there was the same knowledge. The same power. But it did not perish so utterly as it perished in the West. Some small scraps of it survived in hidden places—places that are known to me.” He paused to turn the object in his fingers. “The ancients flew like birds, thanks to the power of such little things as this. Someday I shall fly from one end of my empire to the other, from Kara Karram to the Western Sea in just a single day. This I shall do, and you will see me do it.”